Partner Focus — Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper

I’ve been looking forward to writing this article. Along with Vial Smasher the Fierce, this partner was the most immediately appealing to me. Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper is a combat-ready commander that enjoys jumping into the fray and gives you an amazing benefit as a result.

Let’s look at each part of the card in turn and see what deductions can be made.

Menace: Hard to block

3/7: Hard to kill

“Whenever a creature you control”: Deck should have a higher % of creatures and/or creature token makers than average

“deals combat damage to a player”: Deck should have creatures with evasion and/or be able to give evasion to creatures

“you gain life”: Deck should be able to get extra value from lifegain

“equal to that creature’s toughness”: Deck should include creatures with high toughness

Out of the above rules text, abilities based on creature toughness is generally the least commonly seen on commanders. This means we can use it as the most constraining variable for EDHREC’s data, giving us more specific results. Let’s start with that.

Doran, the Siege Tower has 744 decks total, with 204 decks since the release of the highest used Signature Card, Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper. 81% of those decks include Ikra. That’s a lot. Treefolk as a creature subtype is well suited to having toughness higher than the converted mana cost, making them more efficient for Ikra’s ability. Other commanders in Doran’s Signature Cards are Sapling of Colfenor, another treefolk commander in our “toughness” search results, and potential partner Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa. So one option is to take a Doran deck and put Sidar and Ikra at the top. It’s almost too easy…

Phenax, God of Deception is one of the few commanders here that doesn’t have white. Phenax can help if we want to add a creature mill theme, but that seems contrary to using those creatures for combat. The Creature section is well stocked with creatures that have toughness higher than their cmc. Unfortunately most of them have defender, so they probably won’t be doing combat damage to players. Wrexial, the Risen Deep is a standout character with high toughness, strong landwalk evasion, and an ability that often plays better than it looks on paper. While you wouldn’t know it from Phenax’s page, the color blue is excellent in the category of unblockable creatures.